CVE-2025-38614
Severity CVSS v4.0:
Pending analysis
Type:
Unavailable / Other
Publication date:
19/08/2025
Last modified:
03/11/2025
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:<br />
<br />
eventpoll: Fix semi-unbounded recursion<br />
<br />
Ensure that epoll instances can never form a graph deeper than<br />
EP_MAX_NESTS+1 links.<br />
<br />
Currently, ep_loop_check_proc() ensures that the graph is loop-free and<br />
does some recursion depth checks, but those recursion depth checks don&#39;t<br />
limit the depth of the resulting tree for two reasons:<br />
<br />
- They don&#39;t look upwards in the tree.<br />
- If there are multiple downwards paths of different lengths, only one of<br />
the paths is actually considered for the depth check since commit<br />
28d82dc1c4ed ("epoll: limit paths").<br />
<br />
Essentially, the current recursion depth check in ep_loop_check_proc() just<br />
serves to prevent it from recursing too deeply while checking for loops.<br />
<br />
A more thorough check is done in reverse_path_check() after the new graph<br />
edge has already been created; this checks, among other things, that no<br />
paths going upwards from any non-epoll file with a length of more than 5<br />
edges exist. However, this check does not apply to non-epoll files.<br />
<br />
As a result, it is possible to recurse to a depth of at least roughly 500,<br />
tested on v6.15. (I am unsure if deeper recursion is possible; and this may<br />
have changed with commit 8c44dac8add7 ("eventpoll: Fix priority inversion<br />
problem").)<br />
<br />
To fix it:<br />
<br />
1. In ep_loop_check_proc(), note the subtree depth of each visited node,<br />
and use subtree depths for the total depth calculation even when a subtree<br />
has already been visited.<br />
2. Add ep_get_upwards_depth_proc() for similarly determining the maximum<br />
depth of an upwards walk.<br />
3. In ep_loop_check(), use these values to limit the total path length<br />
between epoll nodes to EP_MAX_NESTS edges.
Impact
References to Advisories, Solutions, and Tools
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/1b13b033062824495554e836a1ff5f85ccf6b039
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/2a0c0c974bea9619c6f41794775ae4b97530e0e6
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/3542c90797bc3ab83ebab54b737d751cf3682036
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/71379495ab70eaba19224bd71b5b9b399eb85e04
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/7a2125962c42d5336ca0495a9ce4cb38a63e9161
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/ea5f97dbdcb1651581a22bd10afd2f0dd9dc11d6
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/f2e467a48287c868818085aa35389a224d226732
- https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2025/10/msg00008.html



